French Reformation
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was cast. The king had determined to throw himself fully on the side
of Rome.
Measures were at once taken for the arrest of every Lutheran in
Paris. A poor artisan, an adherent of the reformed faith, who had been
accustomed to summon the believers to their secret assemblies, was
seized and, with the threat of instant death at the stake, was commanded
to conduct the papal emissary to the home of every Protestant in the
city. He shrank in horror from the base proposal, but at last fear of
the flames prevailed, and he consented to become the betrayer of his
brethren. Preceded by the host, and surrounded by a train of priests,
incense bearers, monks, and soldiers, Morin, the royal detective, with
the traitor, slowly and silently passed through the streets of the city.
The demonstration was ostensibly in honor of the “holy sacrament,”
an act of expiation for the insult put upon the mass by the protesters.
But beneath this pageant a deadly purpose was concealed. On arriving
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opposite the house of a Lutheran, the betrayer made a sign, but no
word was uttered. The procession halted, the house was entered, the
family were dragged forth and chained, and the terrible company went
forward in search of fresh victims. They “spared no house, great or
small, not even the colleges of the University of Paris.... Morin made
all the city quake.... It was a reign of terror.”—Ibid., b. 4, ch. 10.
The victims were put to death with cruel torture, it being specially
ordered that the fire should be lowered in order to prolong their agony.
But they died as conquerors. Their constancy was unshaken, their
peace unclouded. Their persecutors, powerless to move their inflexible
firmness, felt themselves defeated. “The scaffolds were distributed
over all the quarters of Paris, and the burnings followed on successive
days, the design being to spread the terror of heresy by spreading
the executions. The advantage, however, in the end, remained with
the gospel. All Paris was enabled to see what kind of men the new
opinions could produce. There was no pulpit like the martyr’s pile.
The serene joy that lighted up the faces of these men as they passed
along ... to the place of execution, their heroism as they stood amid
the bitter flames, their meek forgiveness of injuries, transformed, in
instances not a few, anger into pity, and hate into love, and pleaded
with resistless eloquence in behalf of the gospel.”—Wylie, b. 13, ch.
20.